2001/12/13

Michael asks: “I’m interested in anyone’s ideas on either good or bad interface issues that they’ve seen while buying things. Remember that I’m selling software, so order tracking and fulfillment don’t really exist…”

I have really smart readers. Wow.

Google now has 20 years of Usenet online. You can entertain yourself with some scary stuff from my past.

  • my first post — this was rather a difficult trick because Penn didn’t officially allow undergrads to post to Usenet in those days (so I transferred out!) (April 1988)
  • my first Internet lecture — more than a decade before Joel on Software I had things to say. Not very interesting things though. (August 1988)
  • my first contribution to Open Source (September 1988)
  • my first software released under GPL (November 1988) — now the Slashdot kiddies have to shut up; I was writing GPLed software before they were born, bwa ha ha!
  • I was writing Macintosh code way back then, too. (August 1993)
  • First post from New York (September 1994)

About the author.

In 2000 I co-founded Fog Creek Software, where we created lots of cool things like the FogBugz bug tracker, Trello, and Glitch. I also worked with Jeff Atwood to create Stack Overflow and served as CEO of Stack Overflow from 2010-2019. Today I serve as the chairman of the board for Stack Overflow, Glitch, and HASH.